The creator GAK

I never applied for a job, unless I was asked to do so. Thus I never had to formulate a formal CV. Here you, instead, will find three items. The first - I - is an appetiser, a translation into English from my Swedish "Memories by an inflated bacteria" about a few of the funny things I did in life. The second part - II - is "instead of a CV" with the essential data of my life. The third - III - is a list of some 80 publications, listed in the Swedish Royal Library.

Here comes number I:

Fifteen minutes of fame.

Andy Warhol once suggested that it was everybodyâs human right in life to get fifteen minutes of fame. I got mine after my first two books in 1967-68. One was a theory of democratic âFunctional Socialismâ that was translated in a dozen languages from Japan to Argentine and, especially, in zamisdat form in Eastern Europe. The other was the first serious analysis of the economic side of the Cold War, a U.S.-led embargo policy, a âWestern Economic Warfareâ that affected every single country in the world, arguably the first truly global policy, a model for what is now happening at the top level in the world.

On four out of 319 pages I had some material on Sweden which the Swedish political-economic-academic complex disliked and chased me out of Sweden. Instead I got a number of invitations which permitted me to study manâs behaviour up close.

Among my many tasks was to be an UNCTAD expert on East-West trade, economic advisor to the Shah of Iran, embargo-expert to Castroâs Cuba, development advisor in East Africa including Idi Aminsâ Uganda. I was invited, the only Swede, to the West German social democratic 150-years celebration of the birth of Charly Marx, a scientific board member in the only Soviet-owned institute for social studies in Western Europe, the Institut für den Frieden in Wien, expert to the Swedish delegation to the first U.N. population conference in Bukarest in 1974, and for a handful of years part-time researcher at the rather anti-communist Vienna Institut für vergleichende Wirtschaftstudien.

On the other side of the Atlantic, my theory of democratic socialism was translated in Canada under the title âSaving the Canadian Economyâ from the big bad U:S. influence. Together with a Danish sex queen, Susanne Brögger, and a good Swedish author, Sven Delblanc, I represented Scandinavia in the âHundred anniversary of Scandinavian Studies in North Americaâ, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The Danes then made me professor at a Marxist academic madhouse. And finally I was invited to become member of an excellent group of thinkers in the mayor American foreign policy âthink tankâ, The Council of Foreign Relations in New York, given the task of trying to formulate a foreign policy for the United States in the 1980âs.

Life can certainly be less interesting! You might ask how I could mix all these communist and capitalist jobs? The answer is that I have always been curious about everything but never had another ideology but âMariannismâ!

Almost all of these jobs resulted in some book which you can find below. These jobs also became ingrediences in the soup of experience that has resulted in this Philosophical Park.

As a schoolboy in Sweden I learned the famous saying of our statesman Axel Oxenstierna some 350 years ago: âMy son, if you knew with how little wisdom the world is ruled.â My hope is that this Park, which Marianne and I have created, in an infinitesimal way might increase that little wisdom.

And now, over to something like a formal curriculum vitae, II:

YEAR

EVENTS FOR GAK

WORLD EVENTS

GAK's PUBLICATIONS

1933

Born in Karlshamn, Sweden

Hitler rises to power in Germany

1954

Entered university of Stockholm. Supreme Court segregation case

1957

Jur. kand.; first degree in law

The Rome Treaty signed

1960

Marriage to Marianne in Athens

Castro in Cuba; U2

1961

Fulbright scholarship to Harvard University

Hammarskjöld killed; Berlin Wall erected

1962

Fulbright scholarship to Univ. of California, Berkeley; Jur. lic.= Dr of Law

The Cuban crisis; Eichmann hanged

1962-68

Work with Gunnar Myrdal

The Cold War dominates

1964

Bought our first house in Asini, Greece

Kennedy killed 1963; Vietnam war starts

1967

"Functional Socialism"

1968

Dr. of Law in Economics; exiled from Sweden, moves to Italy

Student uprisings, The Prague spring

"Western Economic Warfare"

1970-74

Inst. for comparative economic studies in Vienna, Austria

1971

Visit to Cuba

The Vietnam war

"Kuba - seger eller nederlag?"

1971

"Hyckleriets Ã¥rtionde"

1972

UN expert in East Africa

Idi Amin in Uganda, Nixon reelected

1974

Tenured prof. at Roskilde University, Denmark

Oil crisis 1973-74; inflation; Nixon out

"Harrying and Carrying Capacity"

1975-1977

Member of "The 1980s Project" of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, USA

"Lärobok för 80-talet", "Tankar om den fulla sysselsättningen"

1976

(book, resulting from the Vienna job) "The Political Economy of East-West-South Co-operation"

1978

(book, resulting from the New York job) "Reducing Global Inequities" (with Howard Wriggins.)